Dear Colleagues,

we would like to invite you to attend the 11th EUROMECH-MECAMAT Conference Mechanics of microstructured solids: cellular materials, fibre reinforced solids and soft tissues to be held in Torino, Italy in March 10-14, 2008.

The study of solids and complex materials with a microstructure has shown a noticeable development in the recent years. Typical examples are the theory of dislocations, phase transition in solids, defects in crystals, continua with voids. More recently, the problems arising from new materials, like granular materials, polycrystalline solids, media with a discrete structure, cellular and entangled materials, foams, fiber reinforced solids, or biomaterials and living tissues require new tools and new mechanical models, that found their basic foundations in the theories of complex structures. Different types of continua (higher order gradient, nonlocal, micromorphic, micropolar) are elaborated to refer to models able to describe the behaviour of continua in which phenomena occur at different scale levels (usually referred to with the wordings nano, micro, meso, macro). The impact of the microstructure on non-linear wave propagation will be investigated; non linear waves propagation is a relevant aspect, in order to obtain information about micro properties, and to account of possible dispersion and/or dissipation due to the particular structures dealt with. The modelling aspects shall consider the discrete (analogical models - statistical aspects) and continuous strategies, either phenomenologically inspired (including generalised continua, higher order gradient models) or models based on homogenisation techniques. These modelling aspects shall possibly be strongly connected to experimental and industrial aspects.

The general topic of the Conference is then to promote advances in the formulation of constitutive models for these microstructured solids, the solution strategies for the associated boundary value problems, with a good balance between mathematical, mechanical and material aspects. The important issue of the identification of the material parameters of the constitutive models shall be addressed.

Topics of the Conference include:

• Generalized continua and complex structures.
• Biomechanics of soft tissues: anisotropy modelling, growth, instabilities.
• Microstructures.
• Fibrous materials.
• Wave propagation in solids.